


Training Montage

by Querulousgawks



Category: Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-14 06:11:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1255789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Weevil and Mac run into each other in back rooms all through college.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

After the first lecture hall -she is restoring the projector software when the service call comes in for the air conditioner - Mac sees Weevil in back rooms all the time. Server closets, machine rooms, once at the physical plant when she hacked the ventilation network for the campus greenhouse. Weevil had looked up to see Mac dash into the break room and freeze, clutching her laptop as the nursery manager stormed past. “Got something against plants?” he’d murmured, grinning, and she told him what he already knew: _for Veronica_.

She never asks him for a favor, and he never mentions her life of relative ease. Mostly, they talk about wiring. People would say they don't have much else in common. (She sees the tattoo, thinks about dead beautiful liars. Fine. They don't have much in common  _that she wants to talk about._ ) But a love for the workings in the background, the things unseen that keep the world humming along under hoods and through cables - they can see it in each other, now. Classes and quads are the stage at a college, and they are both, differently, privy to the playground behind the scenes.

Mac hooks his machine shop up with EZ-Brush, so he can automate the fussiest paint jobs, and rolls her eyes when he calls the perfect images soulless. He is clumsy over a laptop keyboard, and she fights not to take it away, do it faster on her own. (Once it breaks at midnight, a personal project, and he doesn’t call her until there is paint everywhere and he has solved the problem himself. Until it’s a victory call.)

Weevil shows her how to use the shop’s welding tools, the blowtorch and once, the arc welder. He’s a better teacher than student, as patient and steady in the one role as he was resentful in the other. But at heart she’s a programmer, she learns by experimenting. (Experimenting, she sets the table on fire, and hears his real laugh for the first time.)

He's there the second time Dick tries to kiss her. This one is less sober and more persistent and it takes a harder shove to redirect. Dick stumbles off with the same lost look, and when the roaring in her ears subsides she hears a car hood slam. Weevil straightens up, blank-faced, with grease on his hands.

"You need me to hit him for you?"

Mostly, she hasn't felt like a girl around him. He doesn’t offer up the silent, crackling awareness he shows for the sorority girls, or the edged gallantry that only Veronica gets. Mostly she’s glad, to feel like a person, to have nothing to prove. But now…guys do this for Veronica all the time. She’s not Veronica. But.

_But parole_ , says Veronica, in her mind. Right.

Weevil is grinning at her indecision, and it pulls the truth out of her, because she hopes they are friends now. If they don’t do deep, they can at least do honest: “Parole?” His face falls, and she gives him the rest of the truth, from the part that flinches at _like a girl_ : ”I’d rather hit him myself anyway. If I knew how.”

They think of it at the same time.

A half second of calculation and he is smiling again, matching hers, and maybe they really are friends because she knows exactly what he’ll say:

"You need me to teach you to hit him?"

"Eli. You think I can _learn_ that?”

"I learned the quadratic equation, MacKenzie."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weevil can teach her that, actually.  
> With thanks to jaqofspades, who said kind things and gently pointed out failures of perspective.

Weevil talks her through it first, easy, almost impersonal, and Mac is surprised to recognize the strategy. He treats an attack like she would a virus: break the problem into parts, tackle each ruthlessly, without ever losing an intuitive sense of the whole. He doesn't say it like that. He just drills her on footwork, then the bag, with fists and elbows, then on blocking with her arms and shoulders. He goes after her stance while she's hitting the bag, grabs a fist when she's watching her feet. _Concentrate._

He's a good teacher. It's still terrible. Absurdly, obnoxiously, enragingly difficult. The risks of specialization, she thinks to herself - she hasn't done something she was this bad at since gym stopped being mandatory. Her anger has always been a dull grey buzz, spread thin and usually ignorable; it doesn't want to coalesce behind her fists.

Until he nods tiredly, calls it a night: "Any good pizza on your side of town?" She hits the bag out of his hands, just as he was relaxing, and almost falls over from her own momentum.

"Sorry! sorry." He raises that eyebrow, Weevil for what-the-fuck, "...sorry." She repeats, catches her breath. "They're all pretty bad, actually."

"All of them?"

"Trust me." She says firmly. "I, uh...have PopTarts? If you want."

He grins at that. "I have whiskey."

 

They end up at Dog Beach, the bottle and the box both empty. Weevil doesn't know why (because he's drunk, because he misses Felix, because he sat across an algebra book from her monster and couldn't tell and that's been pissing him off, really) but he tells her the Thumper story. He knows it's the kind of thing you're supposed to take to the grave. He has seen his movies, gets what he and Gus were trying for, hard men with unbreakable, unspoken codes. But the movie heroes never survived to be janitors, that he could remember, never had so much time to think, so few people watching.

"You didn't kill him" Mac objects. She is on her stomach, drawing dots and dashes in the sand as he stares at the sky. "You knocked him out and stole his drugs. The 09ers probably call that _Tuesday._ "

He rolls over, needs to be looking at her when he admits it, "No. You do something like that, knowing what'll happen? You're responsible for all of it."

"They don't think like that." He hasn't heard bitterness in her before, not like this. He wonders if she can hear herself spreading the hate out, target seeking, trying to keep it from pooling in any particular wound. Unsolved vandalism cases all over the 09 taught him how badly that works, but it's not a lesson he knows how to pass on. She's just Veronica's hacker, his old algebra tutor. He's just Veronica's muscle, and her...what, fight coach? Drinking buddy?

Not her therapist, anyway, so he just shakes the bottle, turns away from her. "Yeah, well. That much money is bad for you."

And somehow that makes her crack up, laughing helplessly, hysteria coated in sugar and Jim Beam. "Deeep, Weevil," she gasps, subsiding into giggles and he's no shrink but he'd swear he hears something else in there. It sounds like ease, maybe, or acceptance. Sounds like letting go.


End file.
